


and who is he that says I play the villain?

by kantan



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, endgame altmal but is a jealous altair not such a joy to envision?, except that robert's death date is pushed a little further back to match his historical one, malik doesn't switch sides but comes close, the death is none other than robert's plus a cheeky reference to malik's own i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 08:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19866814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kantan/pseuds/kantan
Summary: Malik experiences a crisis in belief and develops a surprising relationship with a surprising person. The Templars thereby prove to be canny folk—Robert recognizes early that courting disgruntled Assassins to the Templar cause is a fruit ripe for the picking well before Shay’s time.





	and who is he that says I play the villain?

I.

The first time he sees him, it is briefly and without care. And each time after that, the same, until his image solidifies and he becomes a concept. He is the Templar Grand Master, he is the enemy embodied, his death would bring many honors to the assassin who brought it upon him. And yes, he has never met the man, but he has killed so many, whose faces he had not seen until the very end either.

The second time, the second significant time he sees him again, and he tells him this later, he looks on with disapproval. A man whose armor shines too brightly in the sun, overly blinding, a terrible choice all in all. His feet are at the edge of the plank, and he crouches. He looks to the side, and there is Altair—he is hooded and leaning and jumps—and so he follows suit.

The third time... the third time he refuses to remember, but he wakes up every day to such a reminder, and a thatched rooftop he cannot climb without difficulty. A promotion, they say, but he can't see the sense in that; in all perspectives, has he not been demoted?

II.

Robert does not register the fluttering white shadow high above, and never does, over the course of the whole fiasco which Malik has dubbed their second encounter. When that very shadow finally tells him of that day, and many other days, in a room too hot to his liking, he leans over the wooden counter and tells him,

“For me, all my meetings with you have been more than glances.”

“If that is your definition of it, then I would not like to remember my very first meeting of you.”

The sun glares too strongly, and he smiles.

“You were impressive.” Malik looks down and furls his eyebrows.

“And am no longer now.”

“Trust me when I say that it was not the arm you lost that made you impressive.”

III.

When Malik first awakes from that nightmare, abed and wrapped tightly in, he feels as if he is whole. He sits himself up and finds that not so, and does not react, solely because he does not know how to, and so he lays himself back down. When he wakes again he finds that the dreams are more kind, and that he has awakened to a nightmare and not from one. He is so terribly angry but even that is hard to express properly, fully.

In a flurry of events unimportant, he finds himself pushing through a wooden door into a cool and musty room late at night to his new bureau. A reward for his dedication, preservation, and loss. When he enters and lays his hand on the counter, he feels as if with this reward, he has lost so much that it is in itself, a loss.

He sleeps fitfully, and wakes to the shadow cast over him by the ever glaring sun and the wooden planks laid across the ceiling. He had been at the edge of a plank once, and now he finds himself below them. He walks the ground with two legs, as usual, but he feels crippled.

IV.

He recovers, in his opinion, remarkably. Slowly, the rhythm of the bustling affairs of the bureau match his, and there is a purpose in the gathering of contract feathers and the sound of his own pen against maps. He stores them in a shelf that had already been present in the room, and with the brushing off of cobwebs, Malik makes the bureau his own, as much as he can.

When Altair walks in, Malik bristles now, and he wonders if he can tell; the master, now novice, assassin shuffles awkwardly in and out of the bureau, hood pulled down, and Malik can never see his face. That too, he thinks, makes him bristle, the circumstances of it all, and he thinks he'd rather not face the man; it is cowardly, and he knows, but he does nothing about it, and leaves it so.

When he drops in, Altair is anything but ungraceful, a swift jump, and the swaying of white robes. Truly, he is as graceful as an eagle, the bird itself; there is no denying the skill of the man, as there is no denying his arrogance. The rumbling and sharp sounds of stumbling clash so terribly with the quiet swing of Altair's movements that Malik can't help be terribly curious that one day, and he drifts out from behind his table to peer outside into the sun-touched room. He remembers he would have been less speechless if he had found Altair there instead, tripping over his own robes, desperately trying to untangle himself.

“A unique entrance, I must say,” the man says, and it is that glare; the sun hits it so terribly on spot, and the metal is much too garish. A bad choice, he thinks again, but he is so blinded by anger that everything else flies over his head.

“Get out,” Malik snarls, and he is utterly furious; the Templar not so much, overbearing and intimidating.

“Peace, assassin,” he replies, and Malik barks out a laugh.

“Are you making a mockery of me, Templar?”

There's a sword at his neck with steel as cool as the water of the fountain nearby.

“No, I would not mock you; you of all people, no,” Robert says, and Malik glares at him.

“Then, the sword,” he says, gesturing slightly at it, and the other smiles, lifting an eyebrow at him.

“Had it not been at your throat, then I would have truly been mocking you. Underestimating you, well, that was a mistake,” he says as an answer and Malik leans backwards slightly.

“I suppose I am honored,” he replies awkwardly, pauses but continues. Robert continues to look at him, seemingly amused.

“I want to be as clear as possible Grand Master. I do not have the Apple. Why you would think I would be its guardian, as I am, is beyond me, but it would be the only reason you’d have for visiting my humble abode. We have never looked upon you Templars as the brightest of folk.”

“Your tongue is as sharp as your lost blade,” Robert replies laughing, as he sheathes his sword, and looks about the room. Malik is not so keen on his dressing down of his bureau.

“It is not so bad, is it?” he asks finally, and Malik looks at him strangely, questions him again.

“You have accomplished your goal have you not? What is keeping you here, away from your surely more pressing matters?”

“I didn’t think you would have the Apple, if you won’t mind my saying. You are in no state to defend such an item of importance, after all. But, I wished to see what had become of you. The Templars are not the monsters you all are so eager to imagine, and you had rode off with my prize under the shadow of a dead brother and a pathetic arm with success.”

Unnerved by his bluntness, Malik clenched his fist, a movement that Robert noticed despite it being hidden under his sleeve.

“Is it too soon? At one point, you will have to face the realities of your situation, assassin. And I ask again, it is not so bad, is it?”

“I have a name, de Sable, and it is not ‘Assassin,’” Malik replies coldly, then continues, “and my situation is of no concern of yours, except that you should know that you have caused it all.”

“You know full well that it was not me, but your own kind, assassin,” Robert says, all grin and no teeth, before running his hand across the table as Malik had done.

“Quite the host of dust. Do you not like your new promotion? I assume you have gotten one, for such a feat. It would be terrible of them not to.”

“I have,” Malik bites out, “the Brotherhood rewards those who deserve it.”

“Well, it is quaint, I suppose, though terribly hard to enter. How is it you do so without the use of two arms if you do not mind me asking?”

Malik bit back his tongue; he had no chance against him, that he knew. But the insensitivity of the man!

“There is a back door,” he grumbled out.

“There is a back door,” Robert repeats, “yes, where is it?”

“There,” Malik says, quickly, eager to be rid of him, and to his utter relief, Robert saunters towards the direction of his pointed finger.

“Then I will see you again soon, assassin.”

V.

It is too soon for him to reappear, Malik thinks, when Robert comes through the back door this time, and he regrets ever telling him of it. He is much more silent, more conspicuous, and for several seconds he fears for his life, but he supposes that he would have been dead several days beforehand, if he were really wanted dead. Robert brushes by and touches him slightly on the sleeve; Malik jumps a bit anyway and he wonders if the Templar was amused by that. (He was.)

“Good day, assassin,” he says.

“It is never a good day when you are here,” he offers in reply.

“That is a bit harsh. The sun is out, the skies are clear,” Robert says, and he runs his hand along the table again. (There is no dust anymore because Malik had cleaned it to spite him.)

“And you seem to be liking your new post,” he concludes.

“It is quaint, like you said,” Malik retorts lamely, but follows up.

“Are you here for apple-picking, Grand Master? This one doesn't seem like it'll grow if you give it some time. Do you think perhaps it is not the right season?”

“Oh, how that would solve all our problems wouldn't it, assassin? A tree of apples of Eden. It is not the season that is the issue, though; it is the perfect time for picking.”

“If you left, that would solve one of my problems rather quickly,” Malik says, glaring at him noticeably.

“Wouldn't you appreciate some company now and then? This room is rather barren, in my opinion, and lacking in visitors. Who do you talk to when I am not around?”

“Talking is not a necessity,” Malik tells him, and supposes he should defend his own interior taste while at it, “and complexity is not needed for a room to be pleasant.”

“You value simplicity is it, assassin?”

“It seems you do so too,” Malik grunts, “for I am not simply an ‘assassin,’ as I suppose you are not simply a Templar.”

“I don't, and didn’t ever, suppose you would give me your name,” Robert jabs. He was hoping to jab it out of him, really.

“I don't suppose I should,” he replies, looking up from the unfinished map spread out in front of him. Jerusalem, it was, in painstaking detail, so it could be seen and known on paper as it could be seen and known on foot. He was missing some areas he had yet to see, and as he would never resort to guessing, he rolled it back up to put on the shelf.

“Well?” Robert asks, sitting himself down on a nearby stool.

“Malik,” he replies simply, and refuses to say anything else. Robert smiles; an inch closer to familiarity, he thinks, and looks at the shelf the assassin had put away his work.

“A map, is it?”

“Yes, of Jerusalem,” Malik says much too quickly, too proudly, and he wishes shortly after he would have shut his mouth before he could so eagerly declare it so.

“From what you have seen of it?” Robert asks, as he moves towards the counter to see the new one Malik had opened upon the table.

“Yes. I have plenty of time after all now, thanks to you,” Malik says, the end particularly venomously, and Robert looks at him, face to face, unnerving the bureau leader.

“Your anger is justified, but remains powerless as long as reality remains unchanged.”

“You are well aware that if everyone thought so, and acted in accordance to that, we would be living in a virtuous world?”

“You are proving my point, Malik, our point. Not everything done by the masses is right, and that is why—” Malik interrupts, though not simply because he is unnerved by the calling of his name.

“Do spare me your preaching.” Robert pauses, as if considering how to go about continuing, before he speaks again.

“I make a point do I not? Do the Assassins always do the right thing, always, infallibly?”

“We strive to. Unlike the Templars who instead, whilst recognizing the wrongs of the world, contribute to it instead of striving to alleviate it. It is matter of principle.”

“We do not wish to do bad. We simply wish to prevent others from doing bad. And as you said, our world is not virtuous and requires guidance. Guidance that sometimes requires force, such as sometimes, to preserve that freedom of yours, you spill blood. It is indeed a matter of principle. Otherwise, you would be murderers, would you not?”

“It is not as if you could pretend to have clean hands. Remember exactly with whom you are speaking,” Malik grumbles darkly.

Robert looks at him dead-on, unmoving and seriously.

“I do think,” he starts, pausing to look down onto the bureau counter, “that we should discuss that incident.”

“And why is that?” Malik asks, keen on avoiding the topic.

“Because we speak, aware of it,” he gestures.

“If we talk of it, it would not change the fact that it had occurred,” Malik says, and angrily adding, as he thought more on it, “you have remained largely unchanged, but I have not, and dwell on it I will, as I have all the right.”

“Of course. But I do not think that you should dwell on it so heavily. If anything, you are not the one who should be dwelling on it.”

“You speak of Altair,” Malik states, rather simply, but it befuddles him that the Templar would speak of him, and he has no other idea of what to say to that.

“Yes, of him. Do you think he was right?”

“You have a need to ask that question? What could you possibly imagine would be my answer, besides the obvious no? And it is not just I, for he is punished for it, and rightfully so.”

“Yes, a punishment, and whatever is it?”

“He now bears the lowest rank, having fallen from the top of hill to the very bottom,” Malik says, but Robert simply smiles at him.

“But he can climb the hill again.”

“It will be hard work for him, and disgraceful,” Malik rebuts, but he can see the sound argument of the man, refuses to indulge him.

“And you suffer all the same, albeit differently, while bearing no fault,” Robert says, and Malik has nothing to say to that. He turns back towards the shelf.

VI.

It has been due to sheer luck, Malik thinks, that Altair, or anyone at all, has yet to find him engaged in what passed as conversation with the Grand Master of the Templars, but he doesn't question his fortune. If, on the other hand, it was he who was questioned, he would not know what to say, what to explain, and how. His map of Jerusalem grows with the flicks of his pen, but the room reminds him of that bothersome encounter, each and every following one, makes him think and think and he'd rather not. He walks out of that same back door Robert walked in.

The sun is out again, but it is summer, and so the sun is rarely not. Malik closes the door gently and walks out of the secluded alleyway into the open road. He carries his map and notes under his arm, holds his pen in his fingers; it is even in simple times like these that he is frustrated. He can hold less now, and he has his other losses. He starts from the tall building he had stopped at before. He knows it to be a good viewpoint and writes it down while he is seated—as he does, it hits him that he will never get to see such a view ever again.

It is then that there is the same pull on the sleeve, but now also a tap on the shoulder.

“It is the map of Jerusalem,” the man says beside him, and now he knows straight-away, the owner of the voice. It doesn't bother him until later, but when it does, it does incessantly.

“Yes, it is,” Malik says. He is tempted to ask, “Why are you here?”, but he holds back, for reasons he himself cannot discern. Perhaps it has already become an aspect of his life, fairly harmless so far, for he has seen him too many times in too short of a time. Amused, Malik thinks briefly to himself that he must be a terribly important person.

“You are headed the same way I am, I assume,” Robert says, and then asks, “Though I will ask, where exactly are you headed?”

“The tall building over there, hopefully, I think that would be good,” Malik replies, his own thoughts mixed into his words, pointing to the looming tower.

“You are not certain?”

“If I were I suppose my map would not be needed,” he frowns.

“I shall walk with you,” Robert says, uninvited as usual, but Malik stands up and decides to keep pace with him anyway.

“You are terribly unoccupied for a man of your standing,” Malik notes, looking ahead; he spots another tall tower further ahead, and a haystack nearby. He notes that down too, mentally.

“I am not unoccupied,” the Templar simply states and Malik looks quizzically at him, though only briefly, before resuming his scanning of the city.

“When do you think it will be finished?”

“That depends,” Malik replies, “Maybe a week or so? Perhaps longer, if I do not leave the bureau often,” he ponders, and Robert nods, but says,

“It is nice to know that too, and I gladly welcome any news of progress on the map, but I was asking of the conflict.”

“The conflict?” Malik asks absently, noting a prominent fountain nearby.

“Yes. Between you and I,” he says at first, and Malik's face darkens at his own loss for words.

“More specifically, between the Templars and the Assassins,” he finishes, and Malik finds himself liking the broadened focus.

“I hope you expect that my answer will not be to your liking?”

“Of course,” Robert reassures him and continues on, “but I think you will like my answer, to at least a certain extent.”

“We will triumph one day, I am sure. I am now not so sure if you will be able to agree on that,” Malik says, smirking a bit, but Robert merely smiles at him again, that smile. As if he had knew all, expected it all; it is a bit unnerving, Malik thinks afterwards, when he is cleaning up in the bureau.

“I think it will never end.”

“Never end? I do not think I would be content with that, even if it means you do not think you will succeed,” Malik frowns and Robert shakes his head.

“Oh, we will never see the end of this in our lifetimes,” Robert looks to him and says, “we will disappear in time, and only our values will be carried on in a different name.”

“That is a rather negative way to think of it, and not particularly inspiring. But enough of that, I will lose half my map to neglect if you go on like this,” Malik sighs, and Robert smiles again, wider.

“How dedicated you are.”

“An example to be followed, I think, given your unoccupied occupation.”

“Is my company so to your disliking?

“Before I answer, I would like to ask instead, what do you predict to be my answer?”

“I am still standing, so I suppose at the very least, you do not abhor me, do you?” Robert asks, laughing.

Malik glares at him, runs in a circle for his answer, and finally says,

“People often tell me that one should trust their gut instincts. So, what _do_ you think, Grand Master?”

“I think I've already made that clear.”

VII.

Altair swings in through the roof the next day, and walks in, hood up as usual. There seems to be an extra layer of caution today, but Malik doesn't bear it any mind. He later thinks on how he should've, perhaps.

“Safety and peace, brother.”

Malik doesn't deign to reply, looking up at him, and back down.

“It is not related to the mission,” Altair starts, but is interrupted.

“Well then, you have no need to relay it to me.”

“But it is of importance,” he rebuts, and without waiting, continues, “It is a question.”

Malik says nothing, so Altair supposes it to be a sign of granted permission.

“Well, the question is this: are they an issue, the Templars, in this city?”

“They are an issue everywhere,” Malik deadpans, as if it were obvious, and looks at him with a face of irritation. There is a small part of him that knows where this train of thought is heading, and he doesn't wish to broach it. Altair presses on anyway, and Malik figures his wishes will never coincide with reality.

“But more specifically, are they a great issue here?”

“I have not seen enough to compare it to anywhere else,” Malik says, dodging the issue.

“You know of the situation here,” Altair says softly and Malik groans inwardly.

“What is it that you want to say?”

“Maybe it was a trick of light,” the assassin starts, “but I saw a Templar walking beside you yesterday. I wanted to ask if they have been any bother to you. The bureau is safe, but the streets are a different story, even if they cannot recognize us quickly on sight.”

“They have not been a bother,” Malik starts carefully, “and the bureau is safe, as you said.”

“Then that Templar, he had not been a bother?”

Malik looks at him, for once, to convince of his seriousness.

“He was not a bother.”

VIII.

Altair never does ask again, but Malik does not like the new look on his face now, a look of confusion and suspicion. Malik wonders what he would think if he knew that the man beside him was no simple Templar guard, but Robert de Sable, who Malik can't help but think would find this whole situation quite amusing. He does not think Altair would forgive him for seemingly forgiving the Grand Master of the Templar Order himself before relenting on Altair, when they both share the blame of his losses.

He ponders this as Altair tells him of information he received from the interrogation of some poor soul picked up off the streets, and he merely nods but pays no attention. Several minutes later, he leaves and the back door opens slowly from the other side.

“Malik,” Robert greets him and he has become rather accustomed to his name, said in that voice, that he greets him too, by name.

“Robert,” he starts, “I sincerely hope you have not been standing by the door the whole time.”

“Are you worried that I might spoil your comrade's plans?”

“Oh, I do not think you are quite capable of that, that is not it,” he jabs casually, but Robert appears taken aback.

“A surprising surge of confidence,” he says, and his hand is on the counter again. There is dust again, but he refrains from saying anything about it. Malik is altogether surprised at that; he had thought he would be caught red-handed in his neglect.

“Altair is skilled. That is fact. He is simply brash, and not one to be trusted with tasks requiring much thought.”

“Both complementary and critical, you certainly have a way with words.” He pauses before continuing. “Were you worried about my presence at the door?” Robert says, smiling, even laughing a bit, and Malik sighs a bit before moving out of his little nook.

“Do you not also have a way with words?” Malik follows him in stopping a beat before resuming. “And yes, I was,” he says, the corners of his mouth tugging down a bit, and he pushes his way out of the counter. Robert steps aside into the corner, the shadows dropping over his heavy frame.

“Oh? And whatever do you mean by that? Do you mean to say I am charming with my words? Graceful? Masterful?”

“No, I mean to say—well, firstly, it would be quite... strange if you were to be caught,” Malik starts cautiously, but finishes lightly, “and secondly, charming? Are you prone to flattering yourself now?”

Robert doesn't take the bait, leans back into the shadow and asks, hands crossed,

“Has someone been bothering you about me, assassin?” The relapse into simplistic labeling does not go unnoticed by Malik and he is at a loss for words for some time.

“No,” he starts, “simply that it is natural to be concerned,” he says, with his mouth in a straight line. Silence follows, and Malik starts to feel as if that was not the correct answer. It occurs to him then, that it is strange that he should feel as there was indeed a right and a wrong answer, as if he cared for any consequences other than ones that would do him any bodily harm.

Robert knows silence well. He says nothing because he is confident Malik will—and Malik does—it is a technique he has mastered. When he opens his mouth, Robert almost moves his, to smirk.

“Not to say that there has been no bother,” Malik continues, as if the gap of silence had not occurred, and he is almost ashamed to be the one to break it.

“Implying that there has been then?” He prods, and Malik sighs,

“Well, yes, and no.”

“I had previously said that you had quite the mastery over words,” Robert starts, but Malik cuts him off,

“I know what it is you’re trying to say.”

Robert quiets down, leans against the wall, allows him to continue.

“It is hard to say it; simply put, Altair saw a Templar walk with me the other day,” and he shoots him a quick gaze. Robert smiles a bit.

“As he traverses the rooftops often, I can see that happening, yes.”

“I did not exactly require your explanation for how that would occur, that seemed fairly plain and obvious to me,” Malik grumbled and Robert simply tilts his head at that and smiles.

“What had you wanted me to say? Do you really think there will be an issue here?”

“I don’t see how you could imagine any other answer than ‘yes,’ to that,” Malik grumbles and he looks at the looming man beside him. They stand awkwardly as they converse and Malik is tempted to offer him a seat if not for how oddly hospitable that would seem. Robert’s silence gives him some time to contemplate on it but he feels an urge to repeat himself instead, to get the other talking.

“It’s an issue,” Malik repeats, as if worried his complaint would be lost in the air. Though rather quiet, Robert doesn’t seem particularly avoidant of the issue and speaks of it as if he were talking about the weather.

“Is it really so unnatural to be seen walking next to a guard of the city? I assume that is all I really look like from above. While it may be a shame that I was not doing anything particularly untoward to you—”

“A shame?” Malik looks at him with a rather indignant look and Robert merely smiles that knowing smile again, infuriating as usual.

“Yes, that is what I said.” Robert lays a hand oddly on his forearm and Malik stiffens, backing away as soon as he had processed what exactly had occurred.

“Normally I’d enjoy your... brand of humor but I don’t find accusations of treason particularly humorous,” he says defensively, and Robert shrugs, returning his hand next to his side.

“I wasn’t being humorous, but you have a point, assassin.” The reversion away from his name feels oddly off-putting Malik realizes; it is more comfortable to think of people as names than a label, an identity.

“Why ‘assassin?’” he asks. He does not particularly know why it irks him.

“The same reason I am a bothersome Templar, a danger to you, and a concern to Altair, who must see me as some dreadful seducer,” he says, almost laughing at the face Malik makes.

“You are not my seducer,” Malik says decidedly and Robert shrugs at that, once more.

“A shame.”

IX.

He glows gold. Altair sees it for a second time up upon the rooftops. He had finished preparing for the nearing assassination and so it is odd, that faint yellow glow that doesn’t belong. A target, his senses seem to be telling him, but that’s not right; his intended target is most definitely not here, should not be here.

He sees it then, once again, walking figures that are too familiar, blue and white robes clashing in the general brown of the scenery. Malik gestures, he watches, to some sort of building and the man next to him smiles. In recognizing that, a smile, that mysterious face comes into view, worse off for not actually being unknown to him.

Oh, it would be better perhaps if he appeared to be a bother, but he doesn’t; they appear jovial, like they are old friends who have not met for a long time. Robert claps a familiar hand on Malik’s back after he says something, something witty perhaps. Nothing looks right, he thinks, it is all off. Something scares him away from returning to the bureau, despite his curiosity, and so he flees. It feels to him that he is always flying from his troubles.

Malik glows blue. He sees this through the bureau walls hours later and only enters when there appears to be no one else in the room. There is perhaps a bad look on his face, for Malik’s own seems to sour when he comes to turn in for the night. He can only hope it is his usual anger, deserved anger Altair knows, and so he buries himself in the pillows, as if the day was actually long, and as if he had done much work at all. Malik notices, perhaps because he has always been good at noticing things, or perhaps because he is guilty, Altair thinks bitterly at the end.

“You have a problem,” he simply states from across the table and Altair looks up.

“Why does that matter to you?” He did not mean it to come across so... scathingly but Malik’s eyebrows raise. A bad idea, once again, he thinks to himself.

“It seems you forget that you have an important mission at hand,” Malik starts, “one you shouldn’t do so badly as you did the last one I had the honor of witnessing,” he finishes just as brutishly and Altair glares at him. In his mind, he feels he has already assigned fault, Malik is treasonous, consorting with the Grand Master of their enemies, untrustworthy—no... he is being petty, he concludes graciously.

“You will be glad that you need not witness this one,” Altair tries saying aloofly but Malik doesn’t help him soothe the flames.

“No thanks to you, I suppose. I have only this room for my view.”

“Since you are so fond now of de Sable, it would be better if you did not witness it,” Altair blurts out before he can think properly and Malik looks at him, bewildered.

“What?”

Altair finds himself jetting out of the room, up and over the ladder and vines. He feels bad, as if he is taking advantage of Malik’s inability to follow him effectively, but quickly finds that there is no one tailing him.

Guilty, he pronounces in his head, preferring not to go into the complexities.

X.

“You have a problem,” Robert echoes him from last night, as Malik stares down at the map below him.

“I said the exact words to Altair yesterday and regret it greatly,” he spills out, without his usual restraint. A gold mine, Robert realizes belatedly.

“Will you tell me, or shall I have to work for it?” Malik looks at him at his counter with a frown, although he says nothing. Robert finds himself stepping towards him, into the counter area, and puts his hand on the bureau table. Clean and without dust, he finds it.

“It’s clean.”

“That’s not the issue at hand,” Malik sighs.

“I know what the issue at hand is. I am curious why you care so much,” Robert says, tilting his head. Assassins make the best Templars. Bitter assassins, he concludes, must be even better.

“Are you here to tell me it is no use being an Assassin anymore? Just because another has thrown some accusations at me?”

“Oh, but that’s not all of it, right? It’s this,” he says, putting his hand on the bureau counter. “It’s this plain place, every day, in and out, without change.”

“Bureau leaders are integral to our functioning,” Malik argues half-heartedly, caring little that perhaps he should not be spewing such things in front of the Grand Master, who looks at him with an odd face. (Robert sincerely hopes that they are, otherwise, he supposes he has wasted some time, even if the man is interesting.)

“I’m sure that’s true. Does that matter though? To you, I mean.”

“Is that even a question? Don’t take whatever it is that is between us as a sign of my approval of your views. You will not sway them, even if I am admittedly bitter about....well, you know what I mean,” Malik finishes softly, glaring upwards at Robert, who seems to have maneuvered them both into a corner, as if afraid Malik would flee.

“Will you tell me your views?” Robert asks and Malik hesitates, though briefly. The Assassins are enigmatic to the public perhaps, but they are known to the Templars and he supposes his own views encompass only the most basic of information, information he assumes Robert would certainly know.

“We follow the tenets. You know them. Through them we bring peace to the people, free from the corrupt who desire wealth and power.”

“And... what are our views?” Malik can’t help but raise an eyebrow at that.

“You know them better than I, surely. Far be it for me to tell you them.” Robert shakes his head.

“No, tell me my views, as you know them.”

“The Templars... desire control... over the people,” Malik starts, and he stops to look at Robert who appears to be listening intently.

“They do this because they believe the people cannot be trusted, they believe themselves superior, and so they take from the people their rightful freedoms.” Robert smiles that smile when Malik thinks he has summarized it all quite well and it bothers him yet again.

“You think we think ourselves superior.”

“Is it not true?”

“Perhaps it may seem that way. Yet, you speak for the people too, do you not? Is that not a superiority, a form of it?” Malik shifts, his eyes look the other way, across the counter. Robert has his hands placed on the wall and on the table that forms the corner he has boxed the other man in. He realizes how it looks and it bothers him, but not enough to push back just yet.

“You are saying the people would not want freedom?” A lame retort, but Malik is distracted. He is distracted by the shadow that looms over him, the ghosting touch of a hand at his waist. He looks down so as to not look at his eyes, but also to check there is no hand. It is there, in fact. When did it get there, leaping off the wall like an insect?

“Who are you to determine freedom when you do not have your own freedom? I do not know what freedom is, Malik, for you nor for anyone else. I do not attempt to. I am not a hypocrite.” Robert realizes he is not trying all too hard in the art of persuasion; Malik realizes this too. They ignore it together, in tandem, an act Malik allows himself to be swept up in only because of his current frustrations and concerns. Let us pretend this is debate, Malik thinks, let us pretend.

Robert puts a little pressure on Malik’s hips, his left hand settling comfortably in a nook that is usually not emphasized by the folds of his robes. Malik looks up to him then, not because he has found new courage but because it is inevitable, and he swallows. Something is not right, this is different from how he is, usually.

“You glow gold.”

Malik realizes it this instant, exclaims so, and startles Robert enough that he smiles again. Malik would never admit he missed it a little, just a bit. There is something not right about his somber face, that is what it is.

“How good of you to flatter me,” he responds to that, playfully, smirks.

“No,” Malik frowns, almost laughs but refrains, “that’s how Altair knew. That’s how he sees.” Malik wonders briefly afterward if the Templar will get his meaning, hopes so, looks more seriously at him.

“Shall I leave you? Is he here?” Robert asks, and it is genuine in confusion and concern.

“No,” he says again, and it is done too urgently, done too quickly; he lays his hand upon Robert’s armor as if he was sinking. Too good to pass up, too good—Robert’s left hand pulls the other forward.

The Templar kisses gentle, like a first love. Yet, they are neither’s first and they both know so, somehow. Robert finds himself wishing he was. The idea delights him. He has the better grip on the other’s clothes, and quickly finds them bundled beneath his hands, because he does not think he can, is allowed to, grip Malik’s face quite yet.

Malik peeks through his eyes as Robert seems to pulls away and sucks a breath in, Malik’s hand still splayed on the metal strapped to the Templar’s chest. There is silence; Malik is never quite good with silence around him.

“The seducer,” he plainly states.

“Yes.”

A plain response.

XI.

At first, two spots. They are blue and gold, but they near each other, closer by the minute, until they merge. When the gold seems to engulf the blue altogether, Altair almost panics, runs across the roof and curses himself for observing, curses himself for being spiteful. It will be his own fault if Malik is bleeding a red river across the floor. Another wrong he has done the man, yet another one.

They split far too quickly, however, before he gets down there, and the blue is present, flickering. Altair wants to flies then, not towards it but away. Somehow, the Eagle Vision doesn’t tell him anything and yet it does. The briefest of touches, but significant. It reminds him of something before. It is not like an eagle to fear returning to its nest, but he has been uprooted by something, someone. It bothers him immensely but is it just him, that man? He fears conflict, seeing something he doesn’t want to.

He is the first. A hasty peck and entangled hands.

XII.

Their hands link and join on the table, but Robert keeps his other one on his waist. Kisses him once more, briefly; Malik keeps his eyes open through it, looks at the man. Then, the cheek, the neck, and the hand flies upward. A sigh from the shorter man, and a shuttering of eyes as he dips his head. Robert gets half his robe off easily, revealing the white one beneath it, with a few motions of his hands before settling into a general roam, sprawls one of them across Malik’s leaner chest as the other returns home at Malik’s waist. Said man hasn’t been very active lately; it may become a problem.

This, though? Also a problem, Malik realizes perhaps too late, too slowly. The armor too, an issue. Too many buckles and uncomfortable metal.

“It is still a shame,” Malik starts, whispers into Robert’s ear as the other sucks at a part of his neck, making a red welt he doesn’t want to dwell upon just yet.

“Who says so?” Robert asks this against his skin, but the smile Malik feels too makes him huff at the nonchalant question.

“Many, if they could. If they knew.” (Altair knows and has already said so, Malik reminds himself.)

“Altair?”

“He has already shamed me so,” Malik almost laughs, having his mind read. Robert looks up, leans close. His hand leaves the table, covers the bruise forming on the Malik’s neck while the other lands back down on Malik’s waist. A familiar home, almost, like the assassin’s own on the Templar’s cold chest.

“The second time he has done it,” Robert says pointedly. He aims it so to pierce, and even worries that perhaps he is not being too subtle. Malik doesn’t catch it, somehow; anger and desire wreck the mind most effectively.

“Yes,” he replies, pauses briefly.

“Yes,” he says again.

Robert kisses that agreement, it is intangible but still sweet. His roaming tongue, a new thing, causes a hitch in Malik’s breathing, already hurried and in a rush... for what reason he doesn’t know. Malik pushes against him, as if still wishing for restraint and control, but betrays himself in how he leans forward, towards him. Robert’s hands return to the other’s broad back, and with the assassin’s black-blue robe laying on the floor, there is one less layer beneath them and Malik’s warming skin.

With a heave, he lifts him on the table, and for once Malik is glad of how wide it is, although half of his head still hangs awkwardly off it. Robert leans forward, cages the other beneath, and snakes one of his hands beneath the assassin’s white robe, exposing the other’s thigh. Malik grips Robert’s shoulder with his free hand, inches it even further, and brings his head closer to Robert’s shoulder as the taller man runs his hand up his leg and his rear.

“Untoward,” Malik mimics back at him, raises his eyebrows.

“Untoward, but not quite what I was imagining,” Robert laughs, leaves it at that.

XIII.

He does not take him to bed. Robert surprises even himself sometimes. It’d be too quick and he wants to handle the other much like how one handles a newly hatched egg—he wants to enjoy it too, of course. In truth, it is also because Altair interrupts them, as if with spite, and Robert himself develops a sort of grudge. It is always a shame.

Altair’s footfalls are loud, as if on purpose, and the deliberate warning sends them into a flurry. Malik nearly falls off the table, grabs his robe, puts it back on properly; Robert makes for the door. Malik shoots him a look that at once reassures the Grand Master and makes him feel rather smug, a look of frustration. He wants to laugh. Not at him, or at himself, but in general, at what has happened. He supposes, when he arrives back at camp, that who he really meant to laugh at was Altair.

It is hard to look straight into his eyes, hood notwithstanding. Malik almost wishes he had a reason to pull up his own, but his robe is hastily put on as it is, and the hood would be yet another oddity. Altair growls, possibly, that is what Malik thinks he does.

“Only the guilty flee,” he says eventually. Malik would otherwise agree if it did not concern him, him and his... whatever that man was. He knows the specific words, “paramour,” “lover,” but they are almost dirty words to him. They are not the right descriptors.

“Of whom do you speak of?” He delivers this perfectly; Malik believes this or perhaps hopes so, with a serious, confused face. Altair looks down then, upon the ground tiles, as if he were the one caught. He is preparing himself perhaps.

“Do you love him?” He is not good with being subtle, snaking around the subject, and he is around wound up, eager to know, anxious.

“No,” Malik says too quickly, rendering his own feigned ignorance meaningless. It is the truth and he wishes to insist it. He thinks it will do good, but he fails to realize that Altair is not up for persuasion.

“He makes quite a mark on you,” Altair says, his eyes now on Malik’s neck, and he would motion to cover it if he were not too proud. His bundled hood tries its hardest to obscure it, but not completely.

“I do quite miss my arm.”

Silence at that. It’s gotten easier, he realizes, to broach the topic. He is better now than Altair. And so what have these trials done then serve to be mock obstacles? Altair was never bad at killing people, he was bad at all the other things. The feeling smolders in his chest.

“He will be gone soon and there will be no more marks,” Altair says. Malik says nothing, raises his eyebrows in slight mockery.

“Rejoice,” he ends, his voice a drawl, walking once more out of the bureau over the vines and wall.

This sends a fear in his chest. He feels somehow, like a citizen upon the street, looking at the bodies left behind, stupefied. He supposes now he knows how it feels to see it from outside.

The thought comes unbidden; it would be good if he failed. Still yet, there is some fear in his heart—he knows Altair has little need for what little information Malik could offer, even if he would.

XIV.

“You will have a problem, listen to me,” Malik says in a haste, as if the time he is using to say so itself is wasteful. Robert shares none of his flurry, merely raises his eyebrows in amusement.

“We are all very fond of having problems, declaring them even, in this city of Jerusalem,” Robert remarks and Malik shakes his head with a maintained sense of urgency.

“Altair intends to kill you,” he starts, and Robert crosses his arms.

“As he always has, hasn’t he?”

“Well, now he is sincerely moving to do so, and I do not say this lightly.”

“Are you worried for my well-being? That moves me,” Robert grins, stretches his arms out with an ease that infuriates Malik—he is not too sure why it angers him so. In a short two months, he finds his anger directed _for_ this man as opposed to _at_ him, and for a moment he is at a loss.

“You mean it truly then, that I ought to be careful,” Robert grows a little solemn at Malik’s silence, a marked difference to his love of the awkward silence—nowadays, silences between them are very different.

“That Altair ought to fail,” Robert continues, comes closer and places his hand instead on the other’s shoulder. Malik looks up, troubled, but it fades quickly from his face.

“Yes, he must. What is one failure in his catalog of successes?” Robert tilts his head at this.

“Surely I must be one of his trials, a target so that he may earn back his former title.”

Malik scoffs, remembers Altair’s sullen face to fuel his own bitterness.

“His trials have taught him nothing, but I— ” Malik stops himself, feeling still a sense that he may be going too far in condemning what has, recent days aside, been his life, for a, for—

“You have become more comfortable with your reality. Recognition, this is important. It allows us to see when we are being impractical and naive.”

“Then I can trust you in practical matters, such as ensuring that you do not die?”

Robert is, in truth, taken aback by what he has accomplished. He had always prided himself in his own rationality, but it appears he has some charm too; more than anything, Malik cared that _he_ , in particular, lived, rather than it being for the Templars or their cause. He is not too sure what to make of that—could the conversion be called a success?—but he takes it, if not for the cause then for his own satisfaction.

“I will do so, since you asked,” he says, smirking and moves closer to place a kiss at the corner of Malik’s mouth. It opens to let a sigh out into the evening air.

“You continue to take this lightly,” Malik responds, although he does not stop Robert from laughing, drawing him closer, wrapping an arm around his lower back. Mind made up to continue what Altair had so rudely interrupted, Robert takes a few step backwards to deposit the smaller man in a nearby pile of cushions.

“This goes beyond ‘untoward,’” Malik comments a little amused, before adjusting himself on the cushions that have shifted uncomfortably with his arrival. Robert is unbuckling his armor with some difficulty, and Malik stands to lend him a hand.

“Even the mighty can do little without their help, it seems,” Malik hums, working at the buckles under the other’s directions. For a moment, Robert is reminded of his own camp, Maria at his side, as he settles down for the day. He wants greatly to have yet another loyal one at his side. The irrational desire drives him, and so he takes him to bed, as a substitute to sate it.

Malik’s usual blue-black robe is removed in a flash, placed aside and draped on top of Robert’s armor, which is laid gently on one of the bureau’s many pillows. Before Robert returns to Malik’s mouth, already blooming red at the corner, he heaves the underlying white robe up to Malik’s hips, undoing the cloth wrapped around his waist when it gets in the way. Malik imagines he should be more embarrassed—he is not, his own hand fiddling with the other’s tunic, freed now from its metal cage—and Robert likes greatly the idea of taking the assassin, in spite of that detested label, as his own, all while he is still in his Assassin robes and in his very own bureau. Malik does not protest—Robert gets his wish.

When they finish, Robert settles on top of him, heavy albeit warm, his face nestled in between Malik’s shoulder and neck. They stay like so for some time, Malik’s arms wrapped lazily around the other’s torso. Eventually, Malik shifts, turns to face Robert who has fell into a gentle stupor.

“Will you not have to return soon to the Templar camp?” Upon hearing that, Robert shifts on top of him with a groan.

“Yes.” He pauses for a bit, looks straight at Malik, “I don’t enjoy the thought. I’d like to take you with me.” Malik raises his eyebrows in reply: surely, you must know that is impossible?

Robert grunts at that, props himself up with his hands before retrieving his trousers from nearby. Malik lets his robe fall as he stands—the motion is, as he expected, now a bit uncomfortable— and he helps again with Robert’s armor with a newfound familiarity.

“What will they say to your returning so late?”

“They will say nothing, because I am the authority,” Robert says without hesitation and Malik looks up at first with some disapproval.

“It is the same with your leader,” Robert continues before he can say anything, and Malik weighs that assertion in his mind for a while as Robert gets ready to leave.

“I will admit that there is some truth there, for now,” Malik concedes, placing his hand again on his chest plate as if now a habit. He continues, “and perhaps I might come to see that there is even more truth to it when you return.”

“I will return,” he says with confidence, a smile. He grasps Malik’s hand on his chest and, gently, much like the first, kisses him on the lips—he imagines he has the right now to place the other hand to cup the other’s cheek. He is correct, Malik leans into the warmth before gasping a little for breath. They break; Robert walks out of the well-used back door. It is the last Malik sees of him.

XV.

The Templar cannot be trusted, after all, in practical matters. Malik had never felt any particular feeling to the smell of blood, but he can not recall ever greeting it with such revulsion—a disgust that must show on his face.

“He will bother you no longer,” Altair says with a stoic look that, still yet, turns quickly sheepish when faced with Malik’s own.

He pauses for a while, looks down at the bloodied feather on his table (the one that is thankfully wide, but not enough because his head still dangles—) before his eyes cloud over. He directs them at Altair, fists clenched.

“As will you,” Malik spits out with a venom that surprises himself, “or you will see to it that I do not see you again in my sight.” In following that wise old adage to fight poison with poison, Altair’s face darkens as well.

“You should save that venom for the Templars, and not direct it at one of your own, brother.”

“And what right do you have to call me brother?”

Altair turns on him for that, a ferocity in his eyes lingering from the battle.

“You have known him for no more than two years! We have fought together as brothers since we were young—what does he know of you that I do not?” It is the most Altair has spoken to him for a long while and he is taken aback, although not at all cowed.

“A brother! Yes! That is exactly what you have taken from me! You did it through your arrogance, an arrogance I have known for so long, and now I am the one who suffers for it.” Altair bowed his head, whether he was preparing his retort or reliving his remorse, Malik could not tell.

“You have every right to hold that grudge against me, but it seems you forget who it was that swung the sword that felled him. Not just a Templar but the Grand Master, the murderer of your own brother—and you would lie with him!” Altair knows it is an assumption (Malik knows it to be true), and he would have regretted it if not for a clear tell on Malik’s face, the memory being too recent.

“And so you have, it seems!” Quite unable to retort, Malik turns his eyes towards his fists before looking back up, urging calm into a voice largely dismissive.

“What does it matter to you who I lie with? My personal affairs are not official ones.” Altair shakes his head, stunned.

“This is not the man I once knew. The reasoning you hide behind is too faulty to even try countering. You have lost not just your heart, but also your mind.” Malik scoffs at this, but doesn’t respond to the accusation, altogether too tired to do so. With a few minutes of quiet established between them, Altair breaks the silence again.

“So, will you have me in your bureau then? Or am I to leave, unbearable as I am?”

“I am not so unreasonable as to cast you out of the bureau,” Malik starts and Altair’s expression softens a little at that. Malik almost laughs at the change, but it was cruel enough, what he meant to say afterwards.

“But I myself—I don’t intend to stay for tonight. Excuse me,” he pulls up his hood and makes towards the back door. Altair is quick, of course, grabbing him by the shoulder and forcing him to turn around.

“Where are you going to go? He is dead, wh-where are you to turn? Don’t be foolish, how is he worth all this trouble?” There is a strain in Altair’s voice, one largely of disbelief and Malik shakes his hand off.

“I’m not a child, Altair.”

Malik closes the door. Altair’s face is restrained—more accurately, a controlled blank—as it shuts behind him.

XVI.

In a manner, Malik sees her as an apology wrought in a strange form—at the very least, she is a sign of Altair’s growing understanding of how one ought to take caution in not just his own actions, but apply it also to those of others. Maria is his very own Robert; at the very least, that is how he has come to see it in the months that follow her arrival. Her presence is, at first, not entirely welcome, and she could barely be seen walking the headquarters alone, separate from Altair. The others think her a spy, but Malik thinks her too surrounded by the unfamiliar to be any harm even if she was attempting such espionage—he is, in short, as kindly as he can manage, and she notices with some appreciation for it. It takes her still two weeks after her arrival before she speaks to him directly.

“Malik?” She rounds the corner and pauses in a hallway. “May I call you that?”

He is taken aback, albeit not unpleasantly.

“I’ve not any other title, no,” he responds with a small smile before asking, “And you?”

A noticeable amount of relief appears to pass her features.

“Maria is fine. It is nice to be able to have some conversation, I must admit,” she starts rather earnestly and Malik nods in acknowledgement of it.

“We have not been very welcoming, yes. Although for good reason, you understand.” He turns to face her entirely, and sees her hands crossed protectively in front of her.

“Entirely,” she says whilst smiling. “Rather, I am surprised to hear you speaking to me so amiably. Do you know something of me I do not?” Her voice is playful, but Malik realizes that in the inquiry itself there is concern and a certain need to know where she stands with him. His memories of Robert return with snippets of their conversation.

_“Maria’s a good woman. I’d trust her with my life—it is true, there is such brotherhood in the Templars too.”_

Robert had said that once, in one of his many persuasive speeches. Malik is not sure if he believed it then, but he finds that he believes it now.

“Ro—your Grand Master,” Malik starts before looking away from her, turning. “He told me once that he would trust you with his life.” It is a simple answer, but he knows anyway that it will raise alarm bells and questions for Maria, whose eyes widened at his misstep.

“Robert did?” He nods as he looks back at her, not quite sure what else to add.

“And you take him as a, a trustworthy source on that matter?”

“I do, for my own reasons,” he replies vaguely and watches her consider him with guarded curiosity. He imagines she is concerned, for no reason it happens this time, that he may be some turncoat himself, ready to turn her in to those from whom she has run.

“I had heard you were in charge of the bureau in Jerusalem,” she states simply and, as that is fact, he nods.

“Yes. From Altair, I assume.” She makes a slight humming noise.

“Yes... you know, I think he is not sure himself why you are here now with him, and not in your own bureau.”

In truth, Malik is no longer sure if he either wants desperately to see his bureau, as it was, once more, or never again if he could manage it. He was sure it was the latter when he had left, and now that Maria is asking, although somewhat indirectly, he is no longer so certain.

“Did something happen there?” she continues, coming rather too close for comfort.

“Something happened there,” Malik first affirms, “and now I am taking some of my liberties not to be there.”

She smiles as an expression of gratitude, for what little he has given up in admitting that out loud to her, a stranger.

“You will not tell it to me now, I know. But, Malik, I hope one day that you will.”

XVII.

He tells her about a year later. He invites himself to accompany her on one of her trips to town. Altair—they are better friends now, more so than even before the Temple, to their individual, curated horror—laughs, makes the joke that Malik is looking to take his wife from before his eyes. Malik smiles, shakes his head.

“I would not, and she would not let me, you know it.” Altair laughs again that, bids them goodbye as they walk out of the gates. Maria turns to him then, visibly pleased.

“We’ve come far, haven’t we?” It’s a broad statement, almost vulgar in its hopefulness, but Malik can’t help but smile again at such an assertion before sobering.

“Do you still want to know from where exactly we are coming from?” It’s a vague start, but Maria appears to catch his meaning.

“I think when you say ‘we’ here, you are speaking of yourself and Altair, are you not?” Malik shakes his head.

“No, I mean to include you too.” He stops speaking then for a bit, as if readying himself for an evaluation or test. They walk for a bit in a muted silence.

“Were you there, Maria, when Robert died?” Her face darkens and her brows crunch up, marring her previously bright face.

“No. I failed him then... but, I really did try hard, Malik, I did.” The thought saddens Malik, somehow, the idea that neither Maria nor he were there to witness it, his death. He wouldn’t dare, not just yet, to ask after the details from Altair.

“I-I believe you, I don’t mean to accuse, that’s not what I’m doing.” Maria shakes her head, and after a beat, even chokes out a laugh.

“It is so strange to consider that you, of all people, could be accusing me of failing my duty to him—you, not a Templar, not any other one of his friends...” Malik looks at a loss, and so she continues, “but it is good that you are the judge. You would be the kindest, I think.”

“Robert... was a friend,” Malik says with a gesture of his hand, not entirely sure what he was accomplishing with it. “A friend of mine.” With an unexpected grimace, he finishes “I may not be the kindest judge.”

Maria stares at him wordlessly, at first with doubt and then later simply with a wide-eyed disbelief.

“Truly, a friend? I thought at best, a worthy enemy.”

Malik pauses, considers for a bit whether he should answer affirmatively, or go further, a little further than that... he stops walking, and Maria stops besides him.

“I thought of him, when you arrived with Altair,” he says, placing his hand on her shoulder for some semblance of support. She steadies him, her palm on his arm.

“I saw myself in you, a what-could’ve-been, and I wondered if I could do what you did, have done, for Altair.”

“For him?” Maria asks with a bit of wonder, and Malik nods, keeps his head lowered through it.

“They say it very often, you know,” Maria starts, all neutral words, as harmless as she can, “that Assassins make the best Templars.” Malik says nothing, though she sees him thinking with some intensity that could not be seen beyond his eyes. He lets go of her shoulder, starts walking forward aimlessly. It’s a weird semblance of running without the actual rush.

“Malik. Do you want to see it? Where the Crusader camp once was in Arsuf?” She catches up to him with a few long strides, and he turns to look at her with some shock.

“Is he there?” A pause. “Buried, I mean,” he finishes, as if afraid that his ghost really would appear then, right before them both.

“No,” she smiles sadly, “but they built some marker for him, to mark where he died, that is.”

“You’d take me? We could go together?” He does not think he could go it himself just yet.

“Of course,” she says, pats his forearm gently. “But first, to the market.”

XVIII.

Altair greets them on their way back from the former Templar camp, a few months later. It is late, and his face is one of concern, at first, before breaking into a comfortable smile.

“I’m glad you both made it back home safely.”

“Worry looks good on you,” Malik jokes as he dismounts his horse. Altair helps Maria down before turning towards him, his eyes twinkling in humor.

“That’s good to hear, what with all I have to worry about these days.” Malik smiles, moves past him as Maria embraces Altair. She looks from beyond his shoulder at Malik knowingly. He bows his head, just slightly so as to be noticeable, in gratitude. As they part, Altair calls out for him.

“Malik? Would you have time to meet me in my study tonight?” In that the request is not unusual, Malik nods.

“Of course. I’ll be seeing you then.”

XIX.

“Do you mean to return to your old bureau in Jerusalem?” Altair launches this question rather brutishly, Malik thinks, surprises him with no warning (or greeting, for that matter) at all.

“What?” Malik pauses to give the question itself some space to ferment. “No! What gave you that idea?”

“That was the only place I’d imagine you would go—it was a long ride, you took Maria with you... instead of me, that is, and so where else...?” Altair’s sentence trails and lapses, hesitance seeping still through his tentative relief.

Malik realizes, of course, that he could easily assent to the misunderstanding, and to all its benefits, covering it then with some comment on sentimentality. He supposes, however, that this is perhaps the time. An open sore, even if they try their best not to touch it, is an open sore regardless.

“We—Maria was kind enough to take me to where the Templar camp used to be. Well, the outskirts of it.” Altair’s brows furrow and his frown deepens. Altair appears not quite sure what to make of this answer yet.

“Oh,” he says simply, hoping for more.

“I wanted to see where Robert died, Altair.”

Altair turns away from him, and for once Malik is glad of it. Before, he supposes, he would think the man was running again, running away from the problem at hand.

“I spoke to him. I told him about what has happened... that I’m doing well here.” As if attempting to neutralize the sharpness of the act, he continues, “Maria had some words with him too, obviously.”

“I won’t apologize for it, Malik,” Altair starts and Malik shakes his head.

“I’m not asking that you do, but surely, what with Maria, you could understand, perhaps...”

There’s a pregnant pause after that—Malik watches Altair fiddle absentmindedly with the corner of one of the papers on his desk.

“You had lov—you were fond of him, then?”

“I must have been, for some amount of time.” Altair grimaces at that, prompting Malik to continue, “Altair, I can not love him any longer now that he is dead. What harm is there in speaking to a dead man? He will not report to his fellow Templars from beyond the grave, I imagine.”

“Well, it is now a dead man that I can not best,” Altair smiles a little sadly, finally turning to face him. The upturned creases near his mouth, a strange contrast to the frustration in his eyes, are an odd sight to behold.

“What do you mean?”

It is an unexpected turn of events—Altair takes him by his hand and looks at him, mining some confidence from an ore that Malik knows not where it is located. In his heart, perhaps, or some rationality?

“More than anything, more than a true forgiveness, I wanted simply that you could come to love me once more—but, only more than him, just him. He was the one who created this rift between us, and I could not stomach that he would be the one to enjoy the fruits of our division, like... like a parasite,” Altair’s face twists at the last word, as if not sure if he could use it, expecting a stinging retort from the other in his defense. It is then that Malik’s own brows furrow instead.

“Have I not come to love you as I used to?” Malik asks this rhetorically, and so he stops the answer that seems to come from Altair with a gesture of his hand. “I understand you a better man, I recognize it—could you not even say that I love you better than before?” Altair pauses for a while, lets go of his hand gently.

“Do you remember when we were young?”

“You are asking me to recall a good years’ worth of memory with only our youth to identify them,” Malik responds, inducing himself to provide some light humor at his distress’ expense.

“Near the haystack, for our Leaps of Faith,” Altair continues ambiguously and Malik continues his stare. In a heightened moment of speechlessness, he takes Malik’s hand once more, grips it tightly to the other’s further confusion. It takes him some moments to muster up the courage, if he could think of the trepidation so blandly, before he leans down and places one more hasty peck on Malik’s lips. It is undeniably quick—alighting and departing in but a momentous second. Malik greets the gesture with an instinctive, puzzled smile, not too sure altogether how to formulate a longer-term reply, before pursing his lips in a line.

“Oh, but it was years ago,” he finds himself settling on in words, “in our youth.”

“My sentiment is unchanged,” Altair says whilst refusing to look directly into his eyes, “even if all else seems to change within and around me.” It takes him a moment but he does laugh, a little bitterly.

“Well, I am glad you have not run by now, at least.”

Malik finds his sulking figure possessing still yet an odd, noble grandeur—he attests it to his newfound burdens, which seem to have crushed and shaped him into a more respectable man. It is strange to think of him in conjunction with that old Altair, the haughty one with his lessons still ahead of him, but it brings to the present one some levity he finds himself having missed. Wrapped in that nostalgia, he reaches out, embraces him lopsidedly as best he can with his one arm. Altair reciprocates desperately quick.

“You have been, whether regretfully or joyfully so, a constant in my life for which I am grateful,” Altair continues with his head perched upon his shoulder, “and when one day I must face a reality where somehow you have departed before me, I imagine I will rectify it quickly.” Malik can almost imagine the hypothetical pout with which he could have said this and it makes him laugh.

“I always have my head upon my shoulders. It will be a surprise if I go first, with you being as reckless as you always were.” Altair buries his nose further into the fabric of Malik’s robe.

“I am getting better at that, aren’t I?” His question is murmured sheepishly and almost inaudibly, but Malik hears it, close as it is to his ear.

“You are,” Malik says softly and at that, Altair rejoices silently and shamelessly, “and you have Maria with you, who will keep you in check.”

Altair considers this in silence before looking up, retracting his head as he keeps his hands on Malik’s person.

“Can I really not have you as well?”

XX.

Altair’s eyes are an earnest brown, nearing gold as they seem to do when Altair looks beyond the physical realm and into something that is beyond them, tracing back to a past much longer than theirs, pockmarked as it is and colored by a diverse palette of looks, encounters, emotions, and intent.

Malik finds that he cannot deny them in that moment because they represent an honesty he has not encountered from Altair before—they were filtered, in all moments prior, by anger, joy, the whole litany. It is only fitting, he admits to himself, that he give them their due, a sincerity for this honesty given wholly for its own sake.

“You have earned it now, in both your bad and good deeds.” Altair sighs at his answer.

“I won’t impress it on you.”

“No,” Malik frowns, “on the contrary, what value would there in my saying ‘yes’ plainly, as if I cared for you simply, as if only for one side of you—you know, the side you think looks best out in the sun, when you address everyone?”

Altair smiles at least at that, nears a laugh, although he fiddles now with the hem of Malik’s loose sleeve. Malik looks at him then as if granting an indulgence, aware in the back of his mind what Altair desires. He pushes him away with one hand on his chest, just a small distance apart, before kissing him once more on the lips. In a manner, it is quite chaste; there comes with it striking familiarity, not entirely one that is rote so much as natural, and so they break as if they are kissing good night.

In essence, that is what they are doing.

“Good night, Altair. You’ve stayed up late waiting, haven’t you?” Altair looks rather struck but recovers admirably—only just so, as he flushes deeply even if slowly.

“The night will feel even longer, I think.” Malik smiles as he leaves for his room.

“Until morning, Altair.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's nothing more I could desire from a reboot of AC1 than the inclusion of some story line that addressed Malik's anger and loss. Plus, with all the side-switching in recent entries? Templar Malik? Hello?? Ubisoft, please.
> 
> I didn't expect this would hit 12k, but hopefully I've made Malik's, although aborted and brief, switch to the Templar side believable. As such, Robert's death isn't in 1191 as is portrayed in the game but in 1193, as Malik would have otherwise only have possibly known him for at most two months after the temple incident. It appears he still died historically in Arsuf in 1193, although not at the Battle of Arsuf as in the game, so my assumption is that Altair simply took considerably more time to accomplish what he does in AC1 and doesn't get to kill him until 1193. Presumably this really messes with the timeline of all the events that come afterwards, but... out of sight, out of mind!


End file.
